The Bozeman Trail and the Fetterman Fight: Wyoming's Forgotten War

In December 1866, eighty-one U.S. Army soldiers led by Captain William J. Fetterman rode out of Fort Phil Kearny in northern Wyoming Territory to relieve a wood-cutting party reportedly under attack. They never returned. Within forty minutes, all eighty-one were dead in a coordinated ambush led by Crazy Horse, High Backbone, and a unified force of Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho warriors. It was the worst U.S. Army defeat in the Plains Indian Wars before Little Bighorn ten years later, and it broke American confidence in the strategy of trying to hold the Bozeman Trail through Lakota hunting grounds.

Two years later, the U.S. abandoned three Army forts and signed the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty, ceding control of the Powder River country back to Red Cloud and the Lakota. Wyoming became, briefly, the only place an American Indian nation had militarily defeated the United States and forced a negotiated treaty on its own terms. The treaty held for eight years, until the discovery of gold in the Black Hills brought the U.S. back to the Powder River and ultimately to Custer’s death at Little Bighorn in 1876.

This is the story of the Bozeman Trail conflict and the Fetterman Fight, the most consequential Wyoming military events of the nineteenth century.

The Bozeman Trail (1863-1868)

In 1862, gold was discovered at Grasshopper Creek in what is now southwestern Montana. By 1863, the Virginia City and Bannack mining camps had attracted thousands of prospectors and the demand for a direct supply route from the established Oregon Trail to the Montana gold fields became urgent.

John Bozeman, a Georgia-born prospector who had come to Montana for the gold rush, partnered with John Jacobs to scout a direct route. The trail they laid out in 1863 ran north from the Oregon Trail near present-day Casper, Wyoming, up through the Powder River Basin, past the Bighorn Mountains, and into the Montana gold country. It cut about 400 miles off the alternative route via the Missouri River.

It also cut directly through the heart of Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho hunting grounds. The 1851 Fort Laramie Treaty had recognized these lands as exclusive Indian territory. The trail’s appearance, with its associated wagon traffic, livestock grazing, wood cutting, and hunting, was treated by the tribes as a clear treaty violation.

Wagon trains traveling the Bozeman Trail in 1863-1865 faced consistent attacks. By early 1866 the U.S. government decided to enforce the trail’s existence with military force. The strategy: build a string of forts along the trail to protect emigrant wagon trains.

The forts (1866)

Colonel Henry B. Carrington was given command of the Mountain District of the Department of the Platte in early 1866 with orders to establish three forts along the Bozeman Trail. The forts were:

• Fort Reno (already existing as Fort Connor, renamed). On the Powder River near present-day Sussex, Wyoming.
• Fort Phil Kearny (built summer 1866). Near present-day Banner, Wyoming, on Piney Creek at the foot of the Bighorn Mountains. The largest of the three forts; Carrington’s headquarters.
• Fort C.F. Smith (built late summer 1866). On the Bighorn River in present-day southern Montana.

Carrington’s force consisted of about 700 men of the 18th U.S. Infantry, accompanied by their families (including Carrington’s wife Margaret, whose 1868 memoir AB-SA-RA-KA, Home of the Crows is one of the few first-person accounts of the period). The construction of Fort Phil Kearny began in July 1866.

From the moment construction began, the forts were under constant Lakota attack. Wood-cutting parties (the forts depended on continuous logging from nearby pine forests for construction materials and firewood) were ambushed almost daily. Mail riders were attacked. Stock was stolen from the picket lines. By December 1866, an estimated 154 attacks had been made on Fort Phil Kearny in the five months since construction began.

The Lakota strategy, led by Red Cloud and the war chief Crazy Horse (then in his mid-twenties), was sustained pressure: not large set-piece engagements, but constant raiding designed to make the forts untenable through attrition.

The Fetterman Fight (December 21, 1866)

On December 21, 1866, a wood-cutting party was attacked approximately 5 miles from Fort Phil Kearny. The relief force was assigned to Captain William J. Fetterman, a Civil War veteran who had publicly stated that with eighty men he could “ride through the entire Sioux Nation.”

Fetterman was given exactly eighty men plus two civilian scouts, totaling 81. His orders from Carrington were specific: relieve the wood train, do not pursue beyond Lodge Trail Ridge.

The Lakota plan was a classic decoy ambush. A small group of warriors led by Crazy Horse rode to within sight of the relief column, taunted them, and retreated slowly over Lodge Trail Ridge. Fetterman, ignoring his orders, followed.

On the far side of the ridge, in a valley known as Peno Creek, an estimated 1,000-2,000 Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho warriors were concealed in two extended wings. As Fetterman’s column reached the bottom of the valley, the wings closed and engaged from both sides simultaneously.

The engagement lasted approximately 40 minutes. All 81 men in Fetterman’s command were killed. The bodies, when recovered the following day, showed signs of having been ritually mutilated in the Plains warrior tradition. Margaret Carrington’s memoir contains a restrained but detailed account of the recovery and burial.

Indian losses were significant but never definitively counted; estimates range from 12-60 killed.

The defeat was the worst single-day loss the U.S. Army had suffered in the Plains Indian Wars to that point. It would not be exceeded until Custer at Little Bighorn in June 1876.

The Wagon Box Fight (August 2, 1867)

Eight months later, on August 2, 1867, a small detachment of soldiers and civilians (32 men total) defending a wood-cutting camp about 5 miles from Fort Phil Kearny were attacked by a Lakota force estimated at 800-1,000 warriors. The defenders had circled their wagon boxes (the wagon beds removed from running gear) into a defensive perimeter and were equipped with the new Springfield Model 1866 breech-loading rifle, a major upgrade from the older muzzle-loaders the Lakota expected.

The defenders held the position for several hours, taking five killed but inflicting an unknown number of Lakota casualties (estimates again vary, from 30-300+). The fight was eventually broken by a relief column from Fort Phil Kearny.

The Wagon Box Fight was, by Army standards, a defensive victory. By any larger measure, it confirmed that the Lakota could mass enough warriors to threaten the forts whenever they chose, and that the U.S. presence on the Bozeman Trail was effectively untenable.

The Fort Laramie Treaty (1868)

By late 1867, the U.S. government had concluded that the Bozeman Trail strategy had failed. A peace commission was appointed; negotiations with the Lakota began in late 1867 and continued through spring 1868.

Red Cloud’s terms were clear and simple: the U.S. must abandon all three forts, abandon the Bozeman Trail, and recognize the Powder River Country as exclusive Lakota territory. Red Cloud reportedly refused to sign any treaty until the forts were physically abandoned and burned.

The Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 was concluded on these terms. The U.S. agreed to:

• Abandon Forts Phil Kearny, C.F. Smith, and Reno.
• Cease military presence in the Powder River Country.
• Recognize the Powder River Country and the Black Hills as exclusive Lakota and Cheyenne territory in perpetuity.

The U.S. abandoned the forts on schedule in summer 1868. Lakota war parties burned each fort to the ground within hours of the soldiers’ departure. Red Cloud signed the treaty in November 1868 at Fort Laramie. The Powder River Country reverted to Lakota control.

This made Wyoming, briefly, the only place an Indigenous nation had militarily defeated the United States and forced a treaty on its own terms.

What the treaty held until (1868-1876)

The Fort Laramie Treaty held for eight years. During this period, the Lakota under Red Cloud, Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, and other leaders maintained traditional life across the Powder River and Black Hills regions essentially undisturbed.

In 1874, Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer led an Army expedition into the Black Hills and reported the discovery of significant gold deposits. By 1875, thousands of miners had violated the treaty by entering the Black Hills illegally; the U.S. government, unable or unwilling to remove them, instead pressured the Lakota to sell the Black Hills outright. The Lakota refused.

In late 1875, the U.S. ordered all Lakota and Cheyenne to report to reservation agencies by January 31, 1876, on penalty of being declared hostile. Most Lakota in the Powder River country either ignored the order or did not receive it. By spring 1876, the Army was preparing a coordinated campaign to bring them in by force.

The campaign culminated at Little Bighorn on June 25-26, 1876, where Custer’s Seventh Cavalry was destroyed by a combined Lakota-Cheyenne-Arapaho force in the largest single Army defeat of the Plains Wars.

The 1868 treaty was effectively dead by 1876. Within four years the Lakota had been forced onto reservations, the Black Hills had been seized, and the brief period of Lakota military and political ascendancy was over.

Where to visit

Fort Phil Kearny State Historic Site, near Banner, Wyoming (20 minutes south of Sheridan, 25 minutes north of Buffalo). The fort site includes a reconstructed stockade, the original parade ground, a small museum, and interpretive trails. Multi-hour visit minimum.

Fetterman Fight Battlefield Monument, on Massacre Ridge above the Fort Phil Kearny site. The monument marks the location where Fetterman’s command was destroyed. The viewscape from the ridge looking down into Peno Creek valley still shows the topography of the engagement.

Wagon Box Fight Site, about 5 miles from Fort Phil Kearny, marked with interpretive signage.

Fort Laramie National Historic Site, in southeastern Wyoming on the North Platte River. The largest and most complete preserved Plains Indian Wars-era Army post in Wyoming. Multiple original buildings, full NPS interpretation. Worth a full day.

For visitors interested in the Wyoming Plains Indian Wars era, the Fort Phil Kearny / Fetterman / Wagon Box cluster is the densest concentration of substantive sites in the state.

The sites are exposed, with little shade and no services on site at Massacre Ridge. An insulated water bottle and a Leatherman for getting through fence gates are the practical carry. Spring and fall visits at this elevation run cold; lined work gloves earn their weight in October.

Why it matters

The Bozeman Trail conflict is the most consequential and least-remembered Wyoming military event of the nineteenth century. It was the only Plains Indian War in which an Indigenous nation achieved a clear strategic victory and forced a U.S. treaty on its own terms. It demonstrated that determined Indigenous resistance, properly led, could defeat the U.S. Army in this period. And it set up the chain of events (the Black Hills gold rush, the 1875 ultimatum, the 1876 campaign, Little Bighorn, the Great Sioux War) that ended in the destruction of Lakota political independence within a decade.

For visitors interested in understanding what actually happened in the American West, as opposed to the Buffalo Bill version of what happened, the Bozeman Trail story is essential. It complicates the heroic-cavalry mythology of the Plains Wars. It demonstrates the complexity of treaty politics. It centers Indigenous strategy and leadership in a way that most Western mythology omits.

The sites are still there. The country looks the same. Worth visiting.

Related reading on this site

• The Johnson County War: how Wyoming’s cattle barons lost the range
• Buffalo Bill Cody: the man who sold the West to the world
• Tom Horn: stock detective, hanged in Cheyenne 1903
• Buffalo, Wyoming: the Occidental Hotel and the Bighorn Front
• Sheridan, Wyoming: home of King’s Saddlery
• Chief Washakie: the Eastern Shoshone leader who shaped Wyoming
• 9 Wyoming ghost towns worth the drive

Further reading

• Where a Hundred Soldiers Were Killed by John H. Monnett (University of New Mexico Press, 2008). The current standard scholarly account of the Fetterman Fight.
• Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown (Holt, 1970). The classic popular history of the Plains Wars from the Indian perspective.
• Margaret Carrington, AB-SA-RA-KA, Home of the Crows (1868). First-person memoir by the wife of the Fort Phil Kearny commander.
• Jerome A. Greene, Fort Phil Kearny: A Sentinel of the Bozeman Trail (Wyoming State Parks publication).
• Wyoming State Archives, Bozeman Trail and Indian Wars collections.